113 réponses à ce sujet

[earymir]

Sorry for the terrible headline - it captures the idea but with a bit too much baggage.

I liked this article because I think it very much captures the ambivalence that it seems a good number of people feel. It IS a good game, and addictive (if varying in fun level). The article talks about how it has so many disparate pieces that are kind of shallow (quests, cameos, mentions of old characters, etc), without really capturing that deep feeling of the other two games (both combat wise and story/character wise, with some exceptions). Perhaps a new IP entirely would have been better suited to this style of world (open, exploration, MMO combat).

http://www.twinfinit...ition-not-good/

I feel like the millions of GOTY awards is going to end up covering up the legitimate issues that the game encountered (dilution of story, combat, especially).

[Unpleasant Implications]

Don't they always? Just look at Skyrim.

[Dieb]

"Bioware tried to cater for all kinds of players at the same time, which ended up being weird for everyone."

 

I agree.

 

The game is enjoyable, loveable as far as I'm concerned, & even the dreaded multiplayer is suprisingly fun - but I never lost this lingering sense of weirdness. Something is off since the beginning, and it never really stops. After +90 hours and four months, every evening I boot it up, it feels as strange as a new game, and it never truly became "familiar".

 

That's not a complaint, not even criticism. Heck if I know what it is.

 

 

EDIT: Since apparently the above is like-worthy, I'd like to point out I disagree with the headline of the article. I just agree with this one thing.

[Lee80]

While I agree that there are too many sidequests with limited value, the rest of the article was just as pointless for me.  All the core mechanics and storytelling devices of the previous 2 games are present in DAI.  It is very much so a Dragon Age game.  

[TurretSyndrome]

It can have all the core mechanics of the previous games and still not be a Dragon Age game for various reasons. My reason is that it lacks the depth of the storytelling aspects and the depth of character building of a Dragon Age game to me. Basically, it lacks the soul of a Dragon Age game. 

 

DA:I = Hot chick who is made Tranquil. 

[In Exile]

It's also not a True Scotsman.

[Super Drone]

 

 

_{Oh look. Another person who says it's not a Dragon Age game because it's not Dragon Age: Origins.}

[Abyss108]

Felt like the perfect Dragon Age to me.

 

DA2 is the one that feels unlike the rest of the series.

[Fearsome1]

Inquisition is definitely a Dragon Age game, and yes, a very good one. Criticism like this seems very much in the minority. Also, no additional story based dlc has even dropped yet, so there are still holes to fill in this tale. Time to exercise a little patience!

[earymir]

While I agree that there are too many sidequests with limited value, the rest of the article was just as pointless for me. All the core mechanics and storytelling devices of the previous 2 games are present in DAI. It is very much so a Dragon Age game.

I actually find the core mechanics may be the most lacking thing of all. I played both previous games many times each, and even if they aren't perfect (too slow/ too many random burglars parachuting in), they both required some degree of strategy, and had a lot of variability in abilities and how you could approach encounters depending on your class (I usually prefer mages, but really enjoyed DW rogue in DA2 as well). I played through DAI with two supposedly very different mages and they felt almost identical. There are very few real crowd control abilities, very few buffs or debuffs, and I felt like the role-playing aspect of combat was replaced with button mashing. It felt like SWTOR basically (which is fine for an MMO but incredibly meh for a single player game).

I really preferred the mages in both previous games (especially DAO though in this case) due to the huge number of spells available to you, meaning you could play each encounter differently depending on the situation. With ~8 spells, you really don't have that option unless you know what you're getting into ahead of time (in which case, why limit it at all? just adds an extra pointless step of swapping out abilities).

In terms of combat mechanics more generally, I felt they did a pretty meh job at using the 3D landscape. Playing as a DW rogue means you randomly go flying if you use flank attack in anything other than a flat surface, frequently miss enemies if you knock them down right in front of you, etc.

There are some other mechanics I feel like we are missing out on (varying in importance):
*grabbing (you can't be grappled any more by an enemy and tossed around - a terrifying but interesting mechanic, especially when you could have high-resolution tactics)
*the tactics screen with actual contingencies (aka you could truly play as the leader of your squad, telling them how to react to things)
*the tactical camera wherein they more than sometimes decide they want to continue doing the command you said
*healing
* a decent number of sustained abilities which required you to do risk/benefit analysis in a given situation
*attribute and skill differentiation on level up or some other event (I don't know that I care as much about that except that specifically deft hands/deft tools is rather annoyingly 4 perks in the secrets tree)

So anyway yeah, I think there are plenty of good things about the game, but to me the core mechanics feel like a totally different genre of game than the previous two. The story quests I thought were *fantastic* but there were only really 5 rather short ones (Haven, Mage or Templar, Hawke/Fade, Orlais, and Arbor Wilds). I would much rather have had about 15 good quests than such huge open zones with basically only codex stories.

To me the first two DA games (2 being rushed obviously, but the DLC proved they could do greatness when pushed) felt like much cooler versions of D&D PC games (NWN, BG, etc). DA:I dropped those influences almost entirely outside of the exploration part, and replaced it with a very action-heavy MMO style game.

[AlanC9]

The argument in the article relies on some pretty mushy concepts -- "soul, "depth," and so forth. It's like he had feelings and is casting around for a justification for those feelings.

[LPPrince]

I felt that Inquisition was a Dragon Age game.

 

There were a few things that were jarring though(in no order of importance):

 

One, I always thought of Thedas as being totally accepting of various types of relationships, including homosexual relationships. I assumed that even for those in Dorian's position of social hierarchy it wouldn't be an issue, so when the whole, "Dad didn't approve of me being gay and wanted me to hide it/change it" thing came up, it took me by surprise. Didn't expect that from a DA game. I can understand the benefit of the subject coming up(and I'm a heterosexual male), but I think I would've been more comfortable with his homosexuality not being an issue in any way, shape, or form, reminiscent of Cortez in Mass Effect 3. With Cortez I was like "hell yeah thats more of what gaming needs";in Inquisition I was like, "whoa, where is this coming from?". I always argued for a little more realism being introduced into the DA verse, but this bit of realism was a bit out of left field, however good it was for people who could relate.

 

Two, think of quest importance being broken down like this-

 

1. Primary/Main Quests- quests that advance the story forward, those that you cannot avoid if you intend to reach end game, these quests are of the highest importance 

 

2. Secondary/Side Quests- quests that are of lesser importance than main quests but compliment them, they are avoidable but if completed add much to the experience, these are usually very well integrated into the main narrative

 

3. Tertiary Quests/Assignments- quests that have little importance to the plot, the player loses nothing of value if skipping them, these typically add to play time and are often in the background, adding small details to the world, usually lack the cinematography that primary and secondary quests have

 

Past DA games were fine with their questing systems(even DA2), but I felt Inquisition made its secondary quests feel more like tertiary quests. I believe this is due to the choice in cinematic design.

 

DA games made primary quests very obvious, and secondary quests were full of cutscenes so you knew to separate them from tertiary quests, as those had no cutscenes. But in Inquisition, many quests had the new in-universe camera panning style of focus put on characters, making quests of importance not feel so important. That was something I hope they work on in the future, as it felt as if Inquisition was tertiary city. hahaha

 

Three, short hair syndrome. While DA has never had fantastic hair for characters, it at least had the illusion of some characters having long hair. Inquisition however made no attempt to mask this, and went so far as to have characters with previously long hair now have short hair(LOOKING AT YOU LOGHAIN MAC TIR). It was SO weak to see. As someone with long hair, I just want to play as someone with hair that doesn't suck, but Inquisition felt like it lowered the bar that DA had before.

 

There's probably more I could go on about, but I haven't really felt inspired enough to talk about Inquisition much these days. I want other subjects to talk about. So I'll leave it to everyone else.

 

Anyway TL;DR, Inquisition felt like a Dragon Age game, but a few things stood out that may have made it feel more like something else.

[PrinceofTime]

Its pretty sad that after 3 entries into the franchise, dragon age has yet to establish its own identity. Every entry feels different with little coherency and familiarity(and no the protagonist is not the reason) unlike, say Mass Effect.

 

DAI will be forgotten when ME4 is revealed at E3 anyway so whatever.

[Eonetic]

Like a teenager BioWare seems to change style with every game just because they want it and completely disregard or even retcon things they had already established in DAO and DA2.

 

Because of this the games feels very "empty" as you already know what was established in DAI will be retconned in DA4 and BioWare will most likely keep up this trend of doing whatever the **** they want -.-

DA4 could even be a First Person Shooter or a Survival Horror if BioWare feels like it.

 

If you were show someone who doesnt know anything about Dragon Age some gameplay from all 3 games he/she would likely think they were 3 completely separate franchises as they dont resemble each other at all.

 

And a good start to Dragon Age 4 would be to hire some proper Animators,Writers,Modellers and obviously Level Design and environmental Artists 

[LPPrince]

Its pretty sad that after 3 entries into the franchise, dragon age has yet to establish its own identity. Every entry feels different with little coherency and familiarity(and no the protagonist is not the reason) unlike, say Mass Effect.

 

DAI will be forgotten when ME4 is revealed at E3 anyway so whatever.

 

That IS odd of DA. Three games, all drastically different to the others. It hasn't decided on what it is yet outside of it revolving around events taking part in Thedas.

 

Then again, maybe it doesn't need to be more than that.

[Melca36]

Felt like the perfect Dragon Age to me.

 

DA2 is the one that feels unlike the rest of the series.

 

Yep and when DA4 comes out people will whine and complain about it as well. Its the same old song.

[LPPrince]

And a good start to Dragon Age 4 would be to hire some proper Animators,Writers,Modellers and obviously Level Design and environmental Artists 

 

Okay, don't go that far. Bioware's DA team is fine. Disagree with some of their decisions if you must, but don't imply they aren't good at their jobs.

[AresKeith]

That IS odd of DA. Three games, all drastically different to the others. It hasn't decided on what it is yet outside of it revolving around events taking part in Thedas.

 

Then again, maybe it doesn't need to be more than that.

 

I can see why all the three games are different from a gameplay standpoint seeing as the past two games had issues with their gameplay 

[GoneGrimdark]

My main complaint was the lack of cutscenes in secondary quests, like LPPrince said. I loved being able to confront an enemy in a cutscene and talk with them before the battle/making them surrdender in dialogue. I wanted more conversations with villagers and was disapointed at how many quests were given by books you find laying around. It made them impersonal, and felt like 'this book mentions a past event, go find the tree hollow it talked about'. No interaction with an NPC, just a pointless fetch quest. And I don't even mind fetch quests when you get some story/dialogue out of them!

[LPPrince]

I can see why all the three games are different from a gameplay standpoint seeing as the past two games had issues with their gameplay 

 

To be fair, is Inquisition the game Bioware should model the future of DA around?

 

They shouldn't be blinded by Inquisition's success over DA2;Inquisition still needs work, and a different model might be necessary again.

 

That'll be their decision to make.

[AresKeith]

To be fair, is Inquisition the game Bioware should model the future of DA around?

 

They shouldn't be blinded by Inquisition's success over DA2;Inquisition still needs work, and a different model might be necessary again.

 

That'll be their decision to make.

 

I don't know, Bioware wants to find a medium between Origins and DA2's gameplay as well as the changes they made in Inquisition 

 

It obviously does need some tweaks to get better

[Ashagar]

Yep and when DA4 comes out people will whine and complain about it as well. Its the same old song.

 

Yep, its what some people tend do, I've seen the same thing with Civilization and other series. Its just human nature.

[Fiery Phoenix]

To be fair, is Inquisition the game Bioware should model the future of DA around?

Not in my opinion.

 

The thing is both DA2 and DA:I felt like experiments to me... a way of trying to establish a marriage between traditional RPG elements and the more modern sense of a 'cinematic' game experience. I would say DA:I came pretty close to perfecting this formula, but it still falls short on a number of issues that have since been covered many a time.

[Vilegrim]

Yep, its what some people tend do, I've seen the same thing with Civilization and other series. Its just human nature.

What are the odds that the promotion for the next game will heavily reference Origins, yet have nothing recognisably in common with it...again.

[In Exile]

The argument in the article relies on some pretty mushy concepts -- "soul, "depth," and so forth. It's like he had feelings and is casting around for a justification for those feelings.

I personally always hope my inanimate possessions lack a soul.